User Facility Highlights at AGU 2011 Fall Meeting

 
Published: 1 December 2011

Researchers around the world use data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility to study the interactions between clouds, aerosols, and radiation. At this year’s American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, ARM’s scientific users are presenting dozens of oral and poster sessions describing their research using data from the user facility.

Town Hall Meeting: GOAMAZON2014
Learn about this ambitious campaign to obtain tropical climate measurements from the surface to the troposphere near Manaus, Brazil. Instrumentation stationed at two sites—one in pristine conditions and the other in the urban plume—will provide a data set vital to constrain tropical rain forest model parameterizations for organic aerosols, cloud and convection schemes, and terrestrial vegetation components and how these are perturbed by pollution. Michael Kuperberg, DOE’s Climate and Environmental Sciences Division, leads the discussion to seek community input and open the door for collaboration.

Invited Speakers Showcase Convective Clouds Study
Pavlos Kollias from McGill University, Shaocheng Xie from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Toshihisa Matsui from NASA, and David Turner from NOAA headline more than a dozen oral and poster presentations about the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Study, or MC3E. This June 2011 field campaign used numerous overlapping radars, a comprehensive array of ground-based instruments, and two aircraft to obtain the most comprehensive data set ever obtained for studying convective cloud systems.

  • Convective Cloud Lifecycle During the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment, or MC3E. A32C
  • Wednesday, December 7, 10:20 am – 12:20 pm, Moscone West 3006
  • Poster Session: A23A, Tuesday, December 6, 1:40 pm, Poster Hall
  • New Fellows Speak II (Video On-Demand Series): Atmospheric Sciences
    Tom Ackerman, University of Washington, discusses an analysis of multi-year ARM data from Darwin, Australia, and central Oklahoma that identifies distinct transition states in meteorology and seasonal variability. Time series snapshots of cloud classification are used to determine transition probabilities from one state to another, as well as the length of time that the atmosphere stays in any particular state. Once a set of states has been identified in the reanalysis record, climate model snapshots can be mapped into the same set of states. This allows researchers to compare the probability of associated physical processes between models and observations.

    • Analyzing and Evaluating Atmospheric Model Physics Using Synoptic Classification. A32B
    • Wednesday, December 7, 10:49 am – 11:02 am, Moscone West 3002

    Press Conference: Weather and Climate Technology Advances
    Gerald “Jay” Mace, University of Utah, describes the impacts for climate science from the dense array of new scanning cloud and precipitation radars deployed at ARM Facility sites around the world. They provide continuous, unattended operations and scan at several frequencies to probe clouds from multiple angles to provide extraordinary 4-dimensional information about how cloud systems evolve, how they transition from non-precipitating to precipitating, and how they dissipate. These details can improve the timing and accuracy of weather forecasts and hold tremendous promise for improving model simulations of cloud systems.

    • Thursday, December 8, 9:00 am, Room 3000
    • Related Session: A24B-02, Tuesday, December 6, 4:15 pm – 4:30 pm, Room 3006

    Sacramento Valley Study Focuses on Aerosol Aging and Chemistry
    Numerous researchers present results from the Carbonaceous Aerosol and Radiative Effects Study. In June 2010, scientists used two instrumented ground sites and a Gulfstream-1 aircraft to obtain measurements of cloud and aerosol evolution from the Sacramento valley urban plume. Data from this campaign will fill significant gaps and uncertainties in process-level understanding about (1) secondary organic aerosol formation, (2) black carbon mixing state evolution, and (3) the optical and hygroscopic properties of fresh and aged carbonaceous aerosols.

    • Aerosols in Urban and Rural Environments. A21B
    • Tuesday, December 6, 8:00 am – 12:20 pm, Poster Hall

    User Facility Exhibit
    The ARM Exhibit showcases streaming data from our research sites across the globe and other key features of this scientific user facility. Visit the display to learn more about how scientists use data from the ARM Facility for their research. Or pick up the Annual Report and other materials that describe ARM’s measurement capabilities, data collections, and field campaigns.